


Ten below and falling

by agentmoppet



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Curse Breaker Harry Potter, Depression, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Locked In, M/M, Pandemics, Quarantine, Touch-Starved Harry Potter, Unspeakable Draco Malfoy, social distancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:55:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23311246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmoppet/pseuds/agentmoppet
Summary: In which a pandemic results in Harry being locked in the Astronomy tower with Malfoy while they struggle to find the cure.Malfoy’s concern vanished in place of one of the biggest eye rolls Harry had ever seen. It looked painful. “I don’t know, Potter, maybe because I’ve been cursed to live in interesting times more than once in my life, and it’s leaving me with the unpleasant realisation that all we have in this world is—conceptually—each other.” He finished with a blank stare, pushing his fork around aimlessly.“That’s all we really have, when you get down to it,” Harry pointed out, thinking of the two metre distance he was required to keep from people at all times. “Maybe that’s why this one hurt the most; it took that too.”
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 30
Kudos: 541
Collections: Lock Down Fest





	Ten below and falling

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is not an escape; it’s a raw dump of feelings, all relevant to the current situation even if the pandemic in this fic is magical with a very different source than an illness. Specifically--social isolation, feeling distant from people, touch-starved, feeling helpless, overwhelmed... Please check the tags. I will absolutely not be offended if you backspace and search something that's a lot lighter. I'll probably be reading more like that, too... but this is what I needed to write.
> 
> BUT if you do read, there is a happy ending and moments of softness throughout <3

Harry expected to feel nostalgia when he walked through the doors of the Great Hall at Hogwarts, but instead he just felt depressed. It rose up through the bottom of his stomach, catching in his throat like a howl, and on upward to rest in his skull. A looming cloud trapped by bone. 

As he was well accustomed to these days, he ignored it.

“Professor,” he said, forcing his mouth into something like a smile as Professor McGonagall rose from her seat and crossed the almost empty hall to meet him. It wasn’t as difficult as he expected; at the sight of her, a spark of the nostalgia he had hoped for ignited.

“Mr Potter,” she said, and for a moment he thought she might be about to hug him.

But even if that were her way, hugs were not permitted. Not now, not for a very long time.

There was something about that—no hugging allowed—that stirred a memory in Harry’s mind. He knew what it was, knew why it hurt. Didn’t have the space to examine it. So he ignored that too.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” she said, guiding him without touch to the head table.

He tried to remember if Professor McGonagall had ever laid her hand on his shoulder before, or shaken his hand. Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps the sense of loss that had been creeping over him for weeks now really was all in his head.

“Of course, Professor.”

With an awkward fumbling of chairs and bags, trying to nod to the other professors and resist the urge to shake their hands, he managed to sit down. The chatter resumed, and Harry realised that it hadn’t been hushed for his entry; it was just hushed. He didn’t know why he was surprised. It was like this everywhere.

The chairs were spaced two metres apart.

Harry sighed and began to load his plate from the portioned offerings in front of him, presented so that no one else would have to touch his plates. Somewhere along the way, a house-elf had vanished his bags.

“We’re setting you up in the Astronomy tower,” Professor McGonagall explained after the table had passed through the basic niceties of people who haven’t seen each other in a long time and who are sort of famous for various reasons.

The fact that Lockhart was here was endlessly hilarious to Harry, and yet he still couldn't manage to laugh.

“To keep the artefacts away from the dorms?” Harry guessed, and Professor McGonagall nodded.

“Some of them were difficult to move, but since we still don’t know what we’re dealing with… we thought it best to confine… the items.”

_And me,_ Harry didn’t say. It wasn’t like he was any more confined than the rest of the professors. And at least he could leave at the end of this.

Leave, and go back to Grimmauld Place, where he was also confined.

The dark magic spilling out of Hogwarts had already spread as far as London, and they were still no closer to finding its source. The school had been closed for a week, and the air of doom and unhappiness stank out the walls.

“There are no students on the grounds?”

“Not anymore.” Professor McGonagall’s lips pursed. “All affected persons have been moved to the Hospital Wing, with only one unaccounted for.”

Harry frowned. “Unaccounted for?”

“Patient zero.” Her voice lowered. “Another student witnessed the infection take effect, but when she returned with help, Miss Stanthrope had vanished.”

Harry’s stomach dropped. “I hadn’t heard anything about patients vanishing.”

“She’s the only one. Professor Lockhart speculates the curse consumed her.”

Six months ago, Harry would have burst out laughing at anyone taking Lockhart seriously. But since recovering his memory, the man had proven oddly useful. It seemed that taking the time to relearn basic human necessities had meant he learned a few other things as well, and his return as the Potions Professor had been… normal. Sound. A good decision.

“You’ll be joined by an Unspeakable,” Professor McGonagall continued. “And we’re hoping that between the two of you, some progress will be made by Monday. We’ve arranged for two separate rooms at the top of the tower for you each, but of course come Monday, succeed or fail, you will adjourn to the Ministry for debriefing. Not yet knowing what they do, we can’t have you exposed to the artefacts for too long.”

Harry actually brightened a little at that; this was already better than being alone in Grimmauld Place. Pathetic as it sounded, some company would be nice.

“Do you know who—”

The doors of the Great Hall opened, and a tall, slender figure in a tailored travelling cloak and heeled boots appeared in the entrance. Harry squinted. No way, no way in—

“Welcome, Mr Malfoy.” 

Professor McGonagall’s tone almost sounded apologetic, but not quite. There was too much urgency in it, too much necessity. Harry didn’t even blame her.

Still, the slowly unfurling bud of hope in his chest shrivelled again and died; so much for a weekend spent actually talking to someone again. He and Malfoy might be civil enough these days, but it was better for both their sakes—and the sake of their mission—if they just shut the hell up.

Malfoy’s boots echoed in the barren hall as he strode toward the table. Professor McGonagall met him halfway, guiding him to the table as she had done Harry, and turning a blind eye to the restrained nod the two of them gave each other.

“Malfoy.”

“Potter.”

The table fell into hushed conversation once more—a stark contrast to the life Harry remembered. The life he missed. Suddenly, he couldn't get out of the hall quick enough.

The polite chatter of the professors welcoming Malfoy filtered around him, and he focused on cutting into his desert, consuming it bite by bite. It wasn’t until someone began waving something in his face that he realised he was being spoken to.

He looked up to see Malfoy waving his goblet at Harry, one eyebrow raised as he stared pointedly at Harry’s own glass. Confused, Harry picked up his own goblet on reflex, holding it out for the bizarre toast Malfoy appeared to be giving him.

Malfoy’s eyes flashed cold, unreadable, as he clinked his goblet against Harry’s and said, “Here’s to a fast resolution, Potter.”

Harry couldn't agree more.

*

The bedroom was tiny. It made sense, Harry supposed. There hadn’t been time to focus on luxuries—only the essential. Decision after decision, each made with no time, no precedent. But then, it had been that way during the battle too…

But the battle was meant to be over.

He rifled through his trunk—placed at the end of the bed by the house-elves, just like old times—for his instruments. Curse Breaking didn’t require too much from him, usually… Most curses were known. This one wasn’t. He’d brought every instrument he owned.

Cursing from the room across the hall distracted him, and he paused to look over his shoulder. The door was swung wide, tapestries loosely draped over the architrave where Harry thought it may have been a wall before the room existed. Through the gap, he could see Malfoy swearing and kicking his trunk.

It was pretty unlike Malfoy, if Harry was honest.

He froze for several seconds, staring at the scene, before Malfoy turned to him and he realised he was holding several pairs of clean boxers. Flushing, he dropped them on the floor and walked over to the doorway.

“Everything all right?” he asked, clearing his throat and wondering what to do with his hands.

He didn’t step into the corridor. A part of him recognised it was all very childish, but he didn’t seem to possess the ability to change it.

“No,” Malfoy snapped, running a hand through his hair and clenching.

It looked like it hurt. Harry winced.

“Did you forget something?”

“Give it a rest, Potter.” Malfoy’s head tipped sideways, and he glared at Harry from beneath his hair. “You can’t fix everything.”

Isn’t that what they were here for, though?

Harry shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

He turned away, but before he made it two steps, he heard a quiet voice from behind him say, “Yes, I forgot something.”

At the end of the corridor, two bluebirds landed on the balcony surrounding the landing and chirped. They obviously didn’t know about the quarantine. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to affect them… yet.

Harry leaned against Malfoy’s doorframe this time, arms folded, almost inside his room. It was just as dusty and makeshift as Harry’s. He suspected whoever had Transfigured them hadn’t even taken the time to check the residual mortar from the bricks they’d spelled. It was as though a fine coating of plaster covered everything, from the windows to the bed. “What did you forget?”

“It’s…” Malfoy waved his hands. “An instrument. I made it, and it’s hard to explain.”

“Unspeakable business?”

Malfoy looked at him with narrowed eyes, like he was waiting for a punch-line at his expense. It didn’t come, and eventually, he said, “Yes. It measures emotional volatility.”

Ah. Harry understood why Malfoy was pissed, now.

It must have shown in his face, because Malfoy just nodded. “And I can’t get anyone to fetch it for me, because my apartment is warded to hell and back.”

“And you can’t leave quarantine for fourteen days.” Harry finished the rest for him.

That was how the curse worked. It spread through physical contact, lying dormant for up to two weeks or until the person displayed a heightened emotion. It could be joy, fear, anger… didn’t matter what. The witch or wizard’s heart rate escalated, their amygdala activating, and somewhere in the midst of physiological and hormonal responses, the curse ignited. 

It was like second year all over again. Frozen people everywhere, and no one knew yet if they could be saved.

That’s what he and Malfoy were for. Harry had to stop the curse; Malfoy had to cure it. But they were only given two days interaction with the artefacts suspected of causing it, and they couldn't go home until fourteen days of quarantine at a Ministry facility. Harry had received special permission to quarantine back at home… but that was a whole other thing.

“No.” Malfoy kicked the trunk again.

“Was the instrument designed to understand the curse or prevent it infecting us in the next two days?”

“The second one.” Malfoy sat down on the edge of the bed, legs crossed and his chin propped in his hand. “If we freeze in the middle of this, we’re no use to anyone.”

“We might not contract the curse.”

Malfoy shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. It would have been a help to know for sure when we were approach risk levels, just in case. Particularly with you.” He gave Harry a pointed look. “Let’s face it, Potter, you aren’t exactly what one would call Balanced.”

Harry cleared his throat, noting as if from a distance that Malfoy was talking about his temper. The idea was almost amusing. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

Malfoy gave him a strange look. “What?”

Already walking away, Harry shrugged and didn’t look back. “Trust me, it’s fine.”

They finished sorting out their workstations, Harry’s propped on what had obviously once been a stool and was now a three-legged table and Malfoy’s on a dresser, and met at the edge of the balcony. Arranged beneath the parapet were the selection of dark artefacts they were here to examine.

“Do they like fresh air or something?” Harry asked, shoving his hands in his pocket.

Malfoy glanced at him. “Didn’t you read the briefing?” he drawled.

“Sure.”

The sigh was almost inaudible. Almost. “Sunlight seems to dull the exposure risk. Not eliminate, but dull.”

Harry strode forward and examined the closest artefact—a broken Sneakoscope he assumed was from the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. “Then the curse is airborne, not just through physical contact.”

“You’re kidding.”

Malfoy’s tone was so flat, Harry actually looked up at him. “Sorry, no… Sunlight cleanses the air. Only works on airborne curses.”

“No wonder it’s spread so quickly.” Malfoy crouched beside him. “We’d better get started. There’s no time to lose, Potter.”

Muttering a few spells under his breath, Harry picked up the Sneakoscope and brought it over to his makeshift desk. But the second he placed it on the table, the door at the end of the corridor slammed shut.

“What the—” Harry’s head snapped up, an ill sense of foreboding spreading down his spine.

For a second, he thought he saw a spark of lightning behind him, above the balcony, but when he turned nothing was there. He spun back to the exit. Malfoy was already racing across the floor. He grabbed the handle and rattled it, but nothing changed. 

“Be careful,” Harry warned, the feeling rising. “Don’t get worked up.”

“Oh sure,” Malfoy spat. “No worries—Harry Potter tells me not to get worked up, so that solves it, then.”

“Seriously, Malfoy.” 

Something in Harry’s voice must have done what his words couldn't, because Malfoy stilled, looking from him to the Sneakoscope and back again. The Sneakoscope glowed faintly, and Malfoy carefully lowered his hands from the door.

“You think it’s the curse?”

Harry nodded, slowly coming to the door and trying a few spells. Nothing worked. Sighing, he took out a piece of parchment and wrote a note to Professor McGonagall before sending it down the tower, to the front door, with a spell.

The whole time, Malfoy just watched him. As with most things these days, the judgement felt oddly distant. Unnecessary. Not worth Harry’s time.

“Airborne curses have a mild sentience,” Harry explained after the silence stretched too long.

Malfoy continued to stare at him. It should probably be awkward, but Harry couldn't find it in him to care. Finally, Malfoy said, “What the fuck happened to you, Potter?”

It was an excellent question. But it didn’t have an answer, so Harry just turned away.

After all, they had work to do. And time was even more of the essence now. Increased exposure meant increased risk.

And the curse had locked the doors.

*

With unimpeded time to work on the curse, it took Harry only one day to realise he couldn't dissect it. The fact that its sentient component had managed to lock the doors and erect an invisible barrier around the balcony, preventing anyone from flying in or out, was… unprecedented.

The fact that it allowed notes to be Vanished between Harry and Professor McGonagall, and food to be sent in by the house-elves, but not the house-elves themselves, was impossible.

It took Harry six hours and forty-two minutes to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t a curse.

“Then what is it?” Malfoy asked, peering up at Harry through thick-rimmed glasses as he blinked his attention away from his notes. 

“No fucking idea.”

“Lovely. Thanks for the update.”

Harry slumped down against the wall and stuck his head in his hands. “I shouldn’t be here.”

The sound of Malfoy pausing in his note-taking shouldn’t have been audible, but it was, along with the judgement in his breathing.

Harry opened his eyes to find himself staring into the most inscrutable expression he’d ever seen. “What?” he snapped.

“Why do you think you shouldn’t be here?” Malfoy asked calmly.

“Because I’m a Curse Breaker,” Harry pointed out, injecting as much _isn’t it fucking obvious_ into his tone as possible, “and it’s not a curse. They should have someone else. Someone who can actually help.”

Long seconds ticked by, the sound of Malfoy’s frustration whistling through his tightly controlled breath. “They do,” he said finally, when he’d obviously gotten his emotions under wrap. “Me.”

Harry left the balcony before he could throw Malfoy off it.

Inside his tiny, Transfigured room, Harry stared at the walls and wondered where it had all gone wrong. Not the curse—they were all in the dark there—but himself. His brain was… like powder these days. A gritty cloud of meaningless thought. It had been a slow descent, starting well before the curse emerged, but somehow not noticeable until it did.

And when it did, when people started freezing up with no guarantee they’d ever heal, when everyone he knew and loved was in danger once again, it was like… a sigh. His brain had sighed, almost with relief. Not because he wanted this, but because this was what he’d been waiting for—the threat that loomed and loomed and never arrived. It had arrived. And now he could at least deal with it.

Except it wasn’t that easy. The gritty cloud of his mind was agitated, restless with unease. Something else was looming.

Whatever that something else was, he never wanted it to arrive.

Slowly, Harry tuned back into his surroundings and realised he had been staring at his hands for a very long time. The air was oddly silent, like even the birds had left for a while. He could almost hear the scratching of Malfoy’s quill as he worked all the way at the other end of the corridor.

That was one thing he hadn’t expected—how calm Malfoy was. He’d never exactly been the kind of person Harry would turn to in a crisis, and he’d assumed their time together would be spent with Malfoy periodically breaking down into minor histrionic fits. Like usual. Instead, he was eerily focused for the entire day they’d spent together so far.

It was odd. And the more Harry thought about it, the more pissed off he got. What right did Malfoy have to take this tragedy so casually? Just because he didn’t have anyone to care about. Just because he wasn’t personally affected.

He took a few deep breaths, because the last thing he needed was the curse to infect him—not that it really mattered, he supposed, since it wasn’t a curse after all and Harry was summarily useless. Nonetheless. In… and out…

Perhaps he could at least work out what it was and get a message to McGonagall. Then he could confer with whatever expert they actually needed. Be a third party go-between or something.

Rifling through the briefing, Harry began to pay attention to the beginning theories this time instead of the conclusions they’d drawn so far. He needed to go back to basics.

But the words were doing something strange.

Harry blinked and peered closer to the paper, staring as the words themselves seemed to shift back and forward.

“What the—” He stood up and strode back down the corridor to the balcony. “Hey, Malfoy, have you ever seen anything like this?”

Harry held the parchment up to Malfoy and watched as he scanned it slowly, eyes darting across the page, back and forth. He reached the bottom, looked at Harry, and then read it again. Finally, he said, “You mean words? All put together like this? One after the other? I know it’s a notch above your reading level, Potter, but do give it a try.”

“For fuck’s—” Harry turned the parchment around to read it. The words were still moving; Malfoy was just being an arse. He shoved it back in Malfoy’s face. “Look at how they’re moving. You’re telling me that’s normal?”

He tried to keep the edge of anger out of his voice. It was strange… This was the first time he’d felt anything beyond the fog in months. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something flicker along the balcony, above the instruments. But when he turned, there was nothing there.

Malfoy’s forehead slowly furrowed, eyes darting to the dark instruments and back to Harry. He stared at the parchment with a look of deep concern. “Potter… these aren’t moving. They’re perfectly still.”

A shiver of foreboding ran down Harry’s spine. “What?”

“All the letters, all the words… nothing is moving. I’d suggest this was dyslexia, but I’d assume you would have found that out by now.”

The fact that Malfoy didn’t take the opportunity to imply Harry had never read a book before was what drove home the truth more than anything. Harry took back the parchment and stared at the words, heart racing. “Why can’t I read it then?”

“I don’t know.”

Harry looked up to see a shrewd expression appear on Malfoy’s face, his eyes flicking to the balcony, only to vanish immediately. He blinked, but Malfoy was the picture of innocence.

Stomach sinking, Harry stuffed the parchment into the pocket of his robes and backed away. It must be a new symptom which meant Harry was likely infected, and…

“Hey, Potter,” Malfoy said airily. “Why is it that the curse is targeting you? Do you think it knows you’re the useless one out of the two of us?”

Distantly, Harry acknowledged that it had to be one of the weakest insults he’d ever heard Malfoy sling at anyone, let alone him. But Harry felt everything distantly these days; more pressing was the rising tide of fury rising inside him like an old friend. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d stomped back across the floor, braced himself on Malfoy’s desk, and leaned right up in his face to hiss, “What the hell gives you the right to act like this? People could _die_ , and just because you don’t personally give a shit doesn’t mean you can act like this is all one big game with marks on your pretty bloody scoreboard.”

Oddly, Malfoy’s face had initially been triumphant, but by the end of Harry’s speech it quickly morphed into rage. He slammed his hands down on the other side of Harry’s and stood up.

“What in the name of Merlin’s _saggy fucking testicles_ makes you think—” 

A thunder crack sounded from behind them. Harry jumped, hands skittering across the surface of the desk, and whipped around to see the same surge of lightning run across the tops of the artefacts that he’d sworn he saw before. This time, it was without a doubt. The tops of the artefacts danced with electricity, the sparks rising into the air, and then they vanished. 

Harry turned back to Malfoy, and they stared at one another in equal states of speechlessness.

Malfoy recovered first, but not into his perpetual state of calm. Instead, the same shrewd expression Harry had seen earlier crept across his features. It took gargantuan effort for Harry not to respond to that expression with even more anger, but after a few slow breaths, he fought it down.

When they remained unfrozen after a few minutes, Harry concluded they were safe. For now. It could still lie dormant.

“Potter, listen to me carefully,” Malfoy said, his voice level and yet strangely urgent. “I wasn’t sure earlier, but now I’m certain. It’s _trying_ to make us angry . You said it isn’t a curse , well, I believe you… this is more than sentience. This is personality. This is need, drive, _purpose_.” He took a step closer to Harry, so close his breath brushed over Harry’s skin and sent every nerve-ending into chaos.

It had been so long since he’d held anyone. Even before the quarantine, but particularly since. He just wanted… it didn’t mean…

Harry swallowed. “You mean you riled me up on purpose?” 

Malfoy had the grace to look guilty. “A little. I had to see for sure, and the best way to do that was to let it continue what it was doing.”

Beneath the layers of confusion and rediscovered emotion in Harry’s head, a tiny sliver of understanding began to unfurl. “Continue what it was doing? What do you mean?”

Malfoy’s eyes met his, loaded with meaning. “The door, the words on the parchment… It’s been antagonising us from the start. It’s constant, dynamic… tailored precisely for us. To get us in the same room because it knows that’s the best way we’ll piss each other off. How many magical spells do you know that do _that_?” 

“None,” Harry breathed. “Only magical people.”

He ran back to his desk so fast, he almost stumbled. Malfoy startled, watching him go, but didn’t say anything as Harry rummaged through his instruments for the only one he hadn’t thought to try.

“It locates the source,” he explained, as he set the dial down in the centre of the balcony. “There’s no point searching for the source of a curse until you know what the curse is, because it has nothing to track, right? But if this isn’t a curse, and it isn’t operating on its own volition…”

“Then it’s a hex,” Malfoy finished quietly.

Harry nodded, kneeling beside the copper dial and studying the symbols. “And a hex we can trace because we know the intention.”

He set the instrument up carefully. If they were lucky, it would parse through the hex’s purpose to the intention behind it, and trace that intention to its source by morning. An intention could never be severed from the caster like a curse could; it was as much a part of them as the hex was.

If it couldn't find them, if the magic was too strong, it would at least give Harry a name.

Harry awoke sometime after midnight, but well before dawn could appear. He padded softly out onto the balcony, barefoot despite the chill in the air that soaked up through the stone floor, and kneeled down to study the dial. It hadn’t stopped spinning yet, not that he thought it would, and he quickly moved away before he could feel too queasy watching the movements.

The world below the balcony was as empty as his own, and he stared down at the silent grounds feeling oddly disquieted. He’d thought the whole quarantine thing was something he could stomach well enough on his own—just power through and deal with the consequences later. It’s how he’d always managed; it’s how he always would. 

But then Malfoy had shown up, and the old flare of anger and restlessness had ignited. He’d always used to feel like that, hadn’t he? Righteous. Angry. Ready to take on the world.

When had it gone away?

Why had he thought its disappearance was a good thing?

A shuffle of feet behind him made him turn, unsurprised to see Malfoy appear at his side, leaning against the balcony with him. The sleeve of Malfoy’s velvet dressing gown brushed against Harry’s wrist, and neither of them pulled away. 

It was the only human contact Harry’d had in weeks. Longer. Call it a reckless indulgence, since they could still catch it from each other; he lingered anyway.

At least they’d have to quarantine after this, so they couldn't infect anyone else. Harry was only risking his own health. Malfoy could make his own choices.

“I do give a shit, Potter.”

Malfoy’s voice jolted Harry out of the strange train of thought he’d fallen down, and he frowned, trying to parse sense from the words. “About what?”

Malfoy waved a hand at the artefacts on the other side of the balcony. “This. All of it. I give…” he laughed humorlessly, a breathless chuckle Harry almost couldn't hear, “so much of a shit, Potter, you don’t even know.”

The words broke through something inside Harry he didn’t know was there. Suddenly the restrained mask he kept seeing on Malfoy’s face all day made sense.

“The instrument you forgot…” Harry said slowly. “It wasn’t really for me, was it?”

Malfoy sighed. “You _are_ volatile. Don’t think you’re off the hook, but… no. It was for me. I haven’t been keeping it together too well, and if I was going to be in a high risk scenario, I needed a way to ensure I kept my cool.” He took a deep breath, swallowed, and then said, “The hex got Pansy.”

Harry’s stomach sank, nausea setting in immediately. “I’m so sorry.”

The arm on the balcony shifted, and their hands brushed together. Malfoy glanced down at their fingers and visibly swallowed.

“And it’s hard not to—” He broke off immediately and shook his head, cheeks colouring a little beneath the moonlight. “Never mind.”

“I can’t stand not hugging people,” Harry blurted out.

Malfoy’s head snapped up, his eyes wide with shock.

“I don’t think I even really did before,” Harry continued, shaking his head incredulously, “but now that I can’t, it’s like… it hurts. It physically hurts that I can’t touch people. How bloody stupid is that?”

“Not stupid.” Malfoy’s voice sounded strangled, and when Harry looked up, he swore Malfoy was standing closer.

“It…” Harry began, and he wasn’t even sure what he was saying. He kept saying it anyway. “It shouldn’t matter in here, right? I mean, we get quarantined anyway, after.” He wasn’t making sense. Worse—he wasn’t making sense, and he was _still_ obviously asking to hug Malfoy. What the hell was wrong with him?

His entire body cringed in embarrassment, and he moved to take a step backward, but suddenly Malfoy’s hand enclosed around his wrist, and Harry couldn't breathe.

“Makes no difference,” Malfoy said, his voice a little rough.

And that _definitely_ didn’t make sense, because it absolutely made a difference—they could make each other sick. Harry could make Malfoy sick, and the hex could activate before Malfoy found a cure, and what if there _was_ no cure, and…

Malfoy hugged him. The velvet of his dressing gown was warm as Malfoy slid his arms around Harry’s waist, even through the layer of Harry’s pyjamas, and before he knew what he was doing, he was hugging Malfoy back. He buried his face in the soft material of Malfoy’s shoulders, closing his eyes into the warmth and clean—oddly sweet—smell from the fabric.

Malfoy’s grip tightened, breath hitching, and Harry realised that he was probably squeezing him a bit too hard. But when he loosened his grip, Malfoy stepped in closer, and the arm that was around his waist came of its own accord to Malfoy’s neck, fingers sliding through his hair as Harry moved in closer still.

He thought this might have been the looming sensation he was trying to escape, the sense of something bearing down upon him. But now that it had hit… he found he could hold it after all. At least, like this, with someone holding him too.

As hugs went, it was incredible. But Harry didn’t rate it on the scale of hugs—it felt more like sex. The kind of sex he’d never had, where every touch was a caress and a privilege.

His breathing began to slow, his eyes drifting closed as they just held each other, warm beneath the stars, heartbeats thudding gently against each other’s chests. It should have been awkward, but Harry’s emotions were far too warped these days for him to bother with that. He didn’t care.

Malfoy was here, and that was what mattered. It was as though Harry was warm again for the first time in months.

A dinging sound, like a bell, startled them apart. The dial in the centre of the balcony glowed gently, and they both crossed the floor in two strides to see the reading.

When Harry comprehended what he was seeing, it was as if the hex had taken hold of him. As if his whole body had frozen still.

“Stanthrope wasn’t Patient Zero,” Malfoy murmured, face even paler than usual as he read the name off the instrument. “She’s casting it.”

“Accidentally,” Harry clarified, his voice dull to his own ears. “She probably doesn’t even know she’s doing it.”

He straightened up, staring at the sky full of stars and wondering what the old feeling uncurling in his stomach was this time. It was too upset to be hope, but too fiery to be hopelessness. Perhaps there was something in the middle. Perhaps that’s what he needed to find these days—his way back to the middle.

“It can’t find her, can it?” Malfoy asked, studying the final readings.

Harry shook his head. “It can’t find her.”

*

On the plus side, their investigations allowed Malfoy to develop a potion that would allow the infected to pass from their frozen state into an ordinary spell sleep. But they couldn't yet wake up. On the other hand, prodding at the hex and the hexer like they had meant a whole new spate of infections popped up across Scotland, and Harry wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

The fishtank-like neutralisation device had been his latest and final attempt to locate the hex. Typically used on venomous curses, it neutralised the effects by mimicking the environment of the ocean one hundred fathoms deep. Harry had hoped the tracking blockage was due to something venomous in Stanthrope’s hex, which he could neutralise via the instrument. But the hope died when the Gruddlepunk in his fish tank just spat water in his face and blew a raspberry.

Lacking any other choice, since he’d only brought curse-related items with him, he’d outlined everything in great detail to the professors below and hoped Lockhart could figure it out.

This was, understandably, not a sentiment that made him feel particularly good.

Malfoy’s quill scratched somewhere in the background while Harry leaned over the edge of the balcony and stared blankly at the succulents arranged below it. There was nothing he could do, and that felt like shit.

They had already passed four days into their intended two day lock-down, and the stirring resurgence of emotion in Harry’s gut didn’t feel like a positive thing, no matter if it likely was. He wasn’t enjoying remembering what it felt like to be overwhelmed. Powerless.

He stared down at the flowering succulent in the pot below him. A bee buzzed over to the flower, somehow finding it worthwhile to climb all the way up here for pollen.

The succulents looked a little worse for wear, which was odd, because according to Neville you had to be an absolutely terrible gardener to kill a succulent. But the bee had travelled a long way for it, so Harry withdrew his wand and muttered a careful _Aguamenti_ around the flying visitor. When he had finished, nothing much about the succulent had changed, but the soil was damp around the tip of his finger and the droplets on the leaves glistened in the sun.

Several more bees arrived, and Harry realised distantly there were two different kinds of bee up here: one familiar, and one with white stripes on a black body.

With nothing much else to do, he watered the rest of the succulents and watched the bees fly from flower to flower. The bees with the white stripes were slower than the others, he noted. They made far fewer trips back to the flowers, instead drifting happily on the air currents while the others dived through the air with a fierce determination.

It was only when the sun was setting that Harry realised he had watched the bees all afternoon.

Malfoy made a tired noise behind him, and when Harry turned around, he noted that Malfoy did not look like someone who had watched bees all afternoon. Black circles rimmed his eyes, and there was an edge of terror in the whites of his eyes. Harry crossed the balcony quickly and cleared the small table they had been using for their meals. In perfect timing, the house-elves sent up the plates, and Harry made sure that Malfoy got his first.

When Malfoy didn’t even insult him before eating, Harry became worried.

“Do you always look like that?” he asked around a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

“Like what?” Malfoy asked, a deep frown etching into his forehead.

“Like your meal plan involves blood-flavoured lollipops fresh from the source.”

Malfoy’s concern vanished in place of one of the biggest eye rolls Harry had ever seen. It looked painful. “I don’t know, Potter, maybe because I’ve been cursed to live in _interesting times_ more than once in my life, and it’s leaving me with the unpleasant realisation that all we have in this world is—conceptually—each other.” He finished with a blank stare, pushing his fork around aimlessly.

“That’s all we really have, when you get down to it,” Harry pointed out, thinking of the two metre distance he was required to keep from people at all times. “Maybe that’s why this one hurt the most; it took that too.”

Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, and despite the fact they had said nothing cheerful, some of the pain in Harry’s chest eased.

It was as he was falling asleep that Harry realised he had found one small thing he could do without fucking up. Powerless over everything of importance, he could still water a succulent and watch the bees collect pollen.

*

Harry woke up with a scream lodged in his throat. That hadn’t happened since Voldemort, and it was with a resigned sense of familiarity that he stared up at the ceiling and waited for his breathing to slow.

It wouldn’t. It rose and rose, to the point he almost couldn't feel it; he could only hear it.

He realised it wasn’t his own breath he was hearing. Slowly, with care, he rose to his feet and crossed the room to the doorway to ease the door open. The sobs were louder out here. He listened to Malfoy cry for several minutes, wondering what he should be doing about it since Malfoy would absolutely not want Harry to know.

Then he remembered the hug, and how Malfoy’s hands had felt beneath his own, and he knocked on Malfoy’s door before he was fully aware he had done it.

The crying halted. Very muffled, as if by more than the closed doorway, Malfoy answered, “Come in.”

Harry edged awkwardly into the room, noting how it appeared Malfoy had been sobbing face down into his pillow, judging by the wet patch on the white pillowcase. Long streaks of pale skin stuck out beneath the blotchy redness of someone who had been crying for a very long time, and Harry no longer questioned himself when he felt the urge to take Malfoy in his arms and hold him. He just did it.

Malfoy curled into him like a child. “She’s my only friend, Potter,” he mumbled into Harry’s collarbone.

Strangely, he wasn’t crying anymore. Harry traced slow circles on Malfoy’s back and listened to him talk.

“It isn’t _fair_ . She’d just secured her first exhibition, and she was so _bloody_ excited. I’ve never seen her show emotion like that before, it was disgustingly heart warming. She’s all I have in this stupid world, and she’s gone.”

“She isn’t all you have,” Harry protested. He didn’t say she wasn’t gone. “You’ve got your parents, you’ve got—”

Malfoy snorted and pulled away. His eyes were so red-rimmed they looked painful. “My parents,” he said scornfully, “have their heads so far up their arses, they haven’t even noticed there’s an epidemic.”

Harry frowned. “Surely they—”

“Last night, Mother sent me an owl asking if I’d pop over for tea to help her choose a new shawl.”

The silence overwhelmed them, sick with disbelief and inevitability. Harry let it. Sometimes, you just had to let it.

“When I was young,” Malfoy continued, propping himself back on his hands and staring ahead with an air of someone telling a grand story. “My parents hired out and commandeered an entire wing of Mt Mungos for me to play Healer in.”

Harry’s incredulous laughter came out in an explosion of air and choking. “You’re kidding me.”

“I do not _kid,_ Potter.”

Propelled by something he didn’t fully understand, Harry admitted, “No one was allowed to hug me when I was little.”

This time, the silence was sick with something else. Harry couldn't identify it, but it made his eyes prickle, and all of a sudden he couldn't look at Malfoy at all.

A gentle hand squeezed his shoulder. The hand began to pull away but paused, hesitant, and then trailed down Harry’s arm and slipped around his waist. Harry leaned into the touch. He had no idea what he was doing, no idea at all, but Malfoy’s head came to rest against his neck and he found not having any idea could actually work out after all. Sometimes it was about trust.

When Malfoy spoke, his breath danced across Harry’s skin. It almost felt like a kiss. Harry wondered what it meant that he wanted it to be. 

“They’re allowed to hug you now,” Malfoy pointed out, like a sunrise, like a clock sounding one minute past midnight. His voice was softer than Harry imagined it could be, usually all shrill and sharp edges. “But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry your Muggles were the kind my parents justified their existence with.” The words were halting and awkward, an apology for more than one thing.

Harry took a deep breath and was surprised to find wetness coating his cheeks, his lips. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been. “I’m sorry your parents were gits who thought that was a normal thing to do for a child who wanted to play Healer,” he said brisquely, hoping Malfoy knew what he meant.

Malfoy snorted. “I think I enjoyed it at the time. Until I saw the queue of patients on the other floors and put two and two together. Despite what you think of me, I wasn’t a stupid child.”

“I’ve thought you were a lot of things, but stupid was never one of them,” Harry said, his lips quirking into a grin despite the sorrow dragging his chest to the floor.

Something strange appeared in Malfoy’s expression, and when he opened his mouth to speak, Harry found he was holding his breath to hear what came next.

He didn’t get the chance. Another voice spoke instead. “My parents deserve to _choke_.”

Malfoy startled and leaped from the bed, spinning in a circle as he surveyed the room. There was no one there.

The voice was childish and unfamiliar, and in that moment Harry understood far more than he wanted to. With a heavy heart, he rose, shoes like lead, and walked out to the balcony where the tracking instrument had never been packed away. Wind tugged at his hair as he stared down at it.

Malfoy came to stand beside him. “It’s still blank,” he pointed out.

Harry nodded. “But she trusts us a little more after eavesdropping. I think that’s the key.”

Their eyes met, and he saw in them that Malfoy understood. 

A hex that pushed them to the heights of their emotion—rage, fury—and then froze them when they did. 

A hex that didn’t actually want them to reach those heights. Pushed them not to get them there, but to see if they _would_.

Accidental magic, wild from desperation.

“We’re passing the test,” Malfoy said slowly, hands tucked into his pockets as he stared out at the stars. “But it isn’t enough to find her.”

“No,” Harry agreed. “She needs to trust us completely for that.” He sighed, deep and long. “It’s out of our control.”

There was almost a peace in that. Peace and a fierce, aching, sadness that Harry thought might never go away.

“She isn’t doing this out of malice,” Harry breathed, leaning into the arm that hooked around his waist. “She’s just afraid.”

*

They spent the night in Malfoy’s bed, side by side, sharing the simple comfort of knowing someone else was within arm’s reach. They awoke face to face, legs tangled, covers cuccooning them in warmth, fingers laced together. On any other day, it would have been weird, but today it simply felt right in a way few things had of late. There was no one else to seek comfort in, and a strange part of Harry thought he might not want someone else even if there was.

He spent the day fetching Malfoy what he needed for his experiments. As the hours passed by, Malfoy became increasingly focused, poised on the edge of a breakthrough. Harry almost held his breath, entranced in the strangest way by the concept that he wasn’t the hero this time.

Then he remembered Ron and Hermione, holding him in the Forest of Dean, giving him the strength to carry on, and found maybe he was experiencing something else altogether.

When Malfoy announced he’d found the cure, that everyone would live, his eyes shone with tears and his face was blotchy red from exertion. Harry picked him up and spun him in circles around the balcony.

When he dropped to his feet again, Malfoy kissed him, and it felt as inevitable as the cure.

“No matter what happens now, they’re safe,” Malfoy said, packaging up the formula and the potion samples carefully before Vanishing them to the professors below.

“She’ll come out when she trusts we can help her, I suppose,” Harry said, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking around the balcony as if Miss Stanthrope would emerge from the walls.

That was where he suspected she was. Not literally, but in the nebulous, other-worldly sense with which he had always wished to disappear from the Dursleys.

Then he remembered the Sneakoscope, and how it had glowed right before the door had locked. He turned to it, and he could almost feel the air freezing solid, the hex creeping towards the closest threat. It flickered like lightning.

He turned away and left the Sneakoscope alone.

“Trust,” Malfoy said with a snort. “What a concept.”

“It’s all we have.”

“And ability,” Malfoy spat acidly, all sharp edges. “And determination. And sheer bloody tenacity. We’ve got a damn sight more than trust up our sleeves. You didn’t defeat Voldemort with thoughts and prayers.”

Harry snorted, and the fog in his mind finally lifted. The world had colour again, and it took him several attempts before he could speak. “Yeah, all right. Trust _and_ all of that. I hope she finds it too.”

“We’ve done all we can,” Malfoy said, finally easing enough to agree with him. “It’s up to her now.”

“Nothing else for us to do,” Harry echoed.

Harry wasn’t sure who reached out first, the world seeming to pause for days before he finally felt Malfoy’s hands on him, fierce with warmth and want. He was pointy in all the wrong ways, sharp angles and fierce words, but it was that sharpness that had kept Malfoy going. Kept him chasing the cure until he found it. It shouldn’t be attractive or good at all, but it was. Harry wanted it so much, now he knew what that sharpness meant—both what it concealed and what it _was_.

Love took all sorts of forms, Harry supposed, and was shocked to realise he now held the most unexpected of them.

He traced Malfoy’s skin with his lips, burying into the crook of his neck and teasing him until soft gasps filled the room. 

“Hang on,” Malfoy breathed, grasping for his wand and casting a privacy spell Harry didn’t recognise. “Until we know where the little eavesdropper is hiding…” 

A hazy mist engulfed the bed, sweet in the air like honeysuckle.

“Hmm,” Harry said, staring up at the gently swirling grey. “Can’t say I’ve ever shagged in a cloud before.”

Malfoy laughed—a sound Harry had never heard from him before—and pushed Harry back down into the pillows. His mouth on Harry’s was more teeth than lips, vicious as he unashamedly took what he wanted; Harry gave it all. He let his head sink back into the softness of the bed while Malfoy took him apart, laving a path down his chest, over his ribs, and onto his cock.

“Fuck,” Harry breathed, clutching the sheets in two fists and fighting not to thrust into Malfoy’s mouth.

With a slow, practised slide, Malfoy pulled back and flicked his hair out of his eyes. It was already sticking to his forehead with a thin sheen of sweat. A slow smile curled into the corner of his mouth as the mist drifted between them, dreamlike and somehow more real than anything Harry had seen or felt in years.

“You can fuck my mouth if you like,” Malfoy said, like that was in any way a thing the two of them said to each other, and then he slid down onto Harry’s cock once more.

Harry’s heart stuttered, a rush of feeling overwhelming him with its unfamiliarity. In that eternal moment, he was volatile again, wild, everything he hadn’t felt in forever. He moaned, one hand reaching out to tangle in Malfoy’s hair as he did what he was told and thrust upward in slow, careful movements.

The way Malfoy ground slowly against the bed, fingers digging into Harry’s hips hard enough to bruise, told Harry everything he needed to know. He bit his lip, eyes squeezed shut as the warm mist caressed him, and let everything go.

It was a slow build, and then when it crested it was entirely too fast. Harry’s hand fell to the sheets again, and he twisted them as he came, crying out louder than he normally would into the quiet room. 

Malfoy slid back and guided him with a knee to roll over, eyes dark with want—and something deeper. When Harry rolled onto his stomach, almost too sensitive against the sheets so soon, Malfoy braced himself on either side of Harry’s chest and pushed in, slick and hard, without giving Harry a chance to even catch his breath.

He didn’t want a chance, anyway.

Harry bit down on the pillow and loved every second of it as Malfoy thrust into him, rhythmic at first and then with an unsteady movement that told Harry how close he already was after nothing more than Harry’s cock in his mouth. 

When Malfoy broke, Harry wanted to go back and do it all over again.

They fell apart, breathing ragged as they sank into the mattress, hands and legs brushing. The mist trailed above them, a comforting bubble of separation from the world. One that Harry thought, now that he'd had it for even just a moment, he might not need anymore.

An owl hooted, startling Harry out of his languor. Night air washed over him from the open window as he reached out and took the letter it offered from the bedside table.

_Misters Potter and Malfoy, I am delighted to inform you that Miss Stanthrope has returned and requested our assistance in ceasing the unintentional hex she has been projecting for weeks._

_Thanks to his time being pursued via countless love_ _potions_ _, Professor Lockhart has quite the experience dismantling emotional hexes, and is working to counter the hex already._

_Gentlemen, you may leave the Astronomy tower when you choose._

A light breeze swirled through the open window, and the owl ruffled its feathers in simple joy, the mist fading around it. The sun shone through, warm on Harry's bare skin, and beneath fingertips that trailed across Malfoy's chest, he could feel the steady thud of Malfoy's heartbeat. The necessary two weeks of quarantine wouldn’t be so bad now that Harry didn’t have to do them alone, roaming Grimmauld Place like a curse. Now that the world felt a little more reachable, even if he had to put it on pause.

There was an audible click as the door at the end of the corridor unlocked. 

“Hey, Potter,” Malfoy said with a smile. “We can go home now.”

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not sure why I chose to semi-redeem Lockhart in this… but look at him go!


End file.
